‘Isn’t 60,000 years pretty much forever?’ I reply. ‘It goes up and up and up until forever.’ ‘And it’s a lot more than that.’ Daryl smiles at me. ‘It’s amazing how the dating of Aboriginal occupation in Australia went from a few thousand years… then 40,000 years, and now maybe even 60,000 years.’ They are discussing the effect of the archaeological ‘discoveries’ in the area and Griffiths tries to draw Pappin into celebrating this new knowledge, and what it means for Indigenous antiquity: Driving towards Lake Mungo, Griffiths is guided by Daryl Pappin, a Mutthi Mutthi man. ‘Possessing the other… like possessing the past, is always full of delusions’ – Greg Deningīilly Griffiths relates an encounter in Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia (Black Inc., 2018) that I think is representative of this readable, journalistic book about the history of Australian archaeology.
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